Americans would be lucky if it gets away like Japan did

It's time to stop debating whether the US is becoming Japan.

The US already is Japan with near-zero interest rates, a broken financial system and politicians who don't seem to realize the severity of the economy's plight. The only question is whether the US will be so lucky.

Lucky? Japan? Well, yes. For all its rigidities and idiosyncrasies, Asia's biggest economy never fully collapsed. It never got near a depression, nor did deflation get out of control the way many analysts predicted following the implosion of the 1980s bubble economy.